Apple Aperture X?

There have been some rumors lately about the imminent release of ‘Aperture X’, a new version of Apple’s professional photo manager. The rumors are based on the discovery of a book on Amazon, to be released in March 2013. Unfortunately, this is all too familiar to me, because it happened to me as well before Aperture 3 was released. My Aperture 3 book was prematurely announced, even though I had not yet written it and didn’t know anything about Aperture 3 at that time.

Book publishers and book authors like me do not know if or when the next version of Aperture will be released. Unlike some other companies, Apple does not share that information and does not provide us with beta versions. So how does a book like this get announced? It’s simple: the book is planned by the publisher solely based on the assumption that Aperture will be upgraded soon (it’s indeed about time!) and the ‘X’ is just a place holder. Maybe the next version of Aperture will indeed be called ‘Aperture X’, maybe it will be called ‘Aperture 4’, maybe there never will be a major upgrade anymore. We just don’t know. The publisher plans a release date, based on that assumption and gets a ISDN number for the book. And when the publisher brings out a brochure mentioning planned book releases (meant as a confidential document for book stores only), the ‘Aperture X’ book will be in it. The book store is not supposed to make that information available to the general public, but you know Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. There will always be somebody who makes a mistake and does put it online. And so the rumors start, based on nothing.